cameronhousepress:

In 2010, I woke up way too early (Pacific Standard Time) to watch every stage of the Tour de France. I wrote something almost every day. This is a collection of the best. Contents include: Prologue, Stage 1, Sampler, Mountains, Sprints, Cav, Combatif, The Schlecks, Those Middle Stages, Bert, Champs-Élysées.

thegeneralreview:

Oh my god, The Review happened again! We wrote about steakhouses this month because Megan made an amazing steak at home. Probably one of the best things you can do for yourself is learn how to cook meat properly. Make it at home. It’s cheaper and better, and you don’t have to get all dressed up.

I wrote about fried chicken because I have a problem. We both accidentally wrote poems. I had fun looking through public domain images of cows.

This is The Review. Buy it at Gumroad. Pay what you want. We thank you. Then go grill a steak. It’s summer.

cameronhousepress:

The May zine-a-month is here! The worst part of this challenge is the back-and-forth until I run out of time and decide on an idea because I know I can finish it in two days. But I finished this in two days, and that’s the best part of the zine-a-month challenge.

A little zine about my dream of a little shop. A short essay, with a list and reviews of some little shops I have enjoyed during my travels, bound up with a little drawing.

A little shop is the only way I could think to gather up all my disparate interests and do something real with them. This world wants you to pick a major, a career. It looks at you funny if you don’t have a short answer to the question, “What do you do for a living?” I do a lot of things. Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on and tell you all about it.

Apologies to anyone who has ever expressed interest in my childhood dream job of owning and running a little shop, because I’ve probably spent hours talking at you, detailing my plans, sharing my logos, and trying to wrangle you into the project. I figured it was time to put all those ideas into a zine.

Next time someone asks what I do for a living, I hope I can hand them a copy of this.

factsarenothing:

We could have picked any animal. He could have been a giraffe, a monkey, a wombat. We picked the alpaca because they’re both tall and lanky with floppy hair and dopey expressions, but it could have been Harry Styles, Lemur.

It could have only been Harry Styles, though.

Harry Styles is top ten famous. Harry Styles is famous in an era when celebrities can’t go a day without being photographed, whether by professionals or amateurs. Harry Styles is a weirdo. I mean that with only love. A genuine weirdo.

He doesn’t care what you think. He will do anything, he will go anywhere, he will hang out with anyone. It’s because of this we can always find photos to match. Often, there are more than one.

This is why everyone—from the fans to the media to the people who control the band—thinks they know Harry Styles. Harry Styles loves bananas; I love bananas! Harry Styles wears his hair in a ponytail; I wear my hair in a ponytail! Stars: they’re just like us.

But Harry Styles is just like no one. He’s the perfect famous person. He becomes who we need him to be. He’s a rock star on stage. He’s a good guy when fans say hello. He’s only too happy to smile for the paparazzi. Harry Styles doesn’t know how to say no.

And sometimes he looks like an alpaca.

(Source: harrystylesalpaca)

cameronhousepress:

While this essay started out as an elegy for Levon Helm, two years ago, it’s impossible to write about The Band without writing about them all. That’s just the kind of band they were. I love them a lot, and this is the kind of zine I make when I want everyone to love what I love. It’s part introduction, part analysis, part pointing to the good stuff. I hope it’s a gentle nudge to discovering The Band for yourself. 

Go buy THIS ZINE now, because I think it’s a pretty awesome one.

cameronhousepress:

AGNS is a collection of words and drawings, a few of my favourites from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. I spent a year living in Halifax and visiting the gallery to draw and think and learn to see the east coast like a local. This 17-page zine includes Emily Carr, Erica Rutherford, Frances Jones, Maud Lewis, Pablo Picasso, and the best marble boar you’ll ever meet. It’s about art, and making art, and making artists, and why the people out there love lobster. 

Before you head over to buy, here’s an excerpt:

People draw great works of art for all kinds of reasons. The best way to get good is to copy good things. The best place to find good things is your local art gallery. In Halifax, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia was down the street from my apartment and, one day a week, admission was free after 6pm. A few weeks of regular visits after work, I thought I had seen everything. I started to draw everything. I stopped and sat and picked a piece off the wall. It was an excuse to slow down. It was another way to see this city I was only getting to know, but to which I had already committed a year.

Halifax was new and old and unfamiliar, but there were Emily Carr’s trees, standing tall above me. A piece of home from faraway.

I drew her wild swathes of green, brown, and blue in black pen on white. I drew Picasso, with not nearly the confidence he had in his line. I drew sculptures, though I could never get the curves like I saw them in my head. I drew what caught my eye, for practice and for keeps. When I went home—when I knew then that I would—I wanted to take a piece of the city with me.

AGNS: a sketchbook is pay-what-you-want, available for immediate download at Gumroad.

factsarenothing:

"Can I read you a couple tweets and can you give us a reaction to it?"

Sigh. This is why we need to talk this stuff. Sports belongs to everyone, and the Olympics is supposed to be the place where we celebrate that.

My first memory of the Olympics is Mark Tewksbury winning gold in Barcelona in 1992. He wasn’t out then. That year, Mark won Canada’s first gold of the Games. This year, Mark McMorris won our first medal. And nothing has changed because Mark in ‘92 was afraid to be the gay swimmer and Mark in ‘14 is afraid of gay snowboard fans.

I love the Olympics because the best moments are small and human and true. I keep waiting for the best to use their moment to speak up instead of recoil.

It’s late where I am, and I’m writing this on my phone. I was scrolling Tumblr, and there was this, mixed up with the Glee, Teen Wolf, and One Direction gifs that fill my dashboard these days, and I couldn’t scroll past. Not when every single one of those things has this in common: teasing at the line between gay and straight, then running back to where they believe it’s safe.

The people in Sochi don’t get to run back to a safe space when the Olympics are over.

My thoughts aren’t complete tonight, and for that I apologise, but I wanted to speak up because, if Mark McMorris isn’t going to use his moment, the rest of us can.

(Source: dylthug)

cameronhousepress:

A new 24-page digital edition of THE CUP is now available at Gumroad. You know I love paper, and I’ll continue to make paper books in the future of Cameron House Press, but this is a nice permanent place where they can all live and take care of themselves. The buying process is pain-free, and your download arrives immediately.

As I work on building up the catalogue and dream up new ideas, check out THE CUP and the first collected volume of THE GENERAL REVIEW. Your support allows me to continue writing and making, and I thank you for that.

On to the next step.

factsarenothing:

I didn’t have a super crush on Pavel Bure. That was my friend, Jenn, who actually met him when we were in 9th grade, and I remember the next day so vividly. She was basically useless, floating around in a haze of wonder.

I wasn’t used to hockey players being pretty. Because he really was that pretty. I mean, my God, look at that top photo. He looks like Tab Hunter.

Tonight, the Canucks retired his number 10, after long years of angst and politics and estrangement. We were angry when he left because we thought he wanted to leave. He wanted to win, and we wanted to win, and it wasn’t going to happen here in Vancouver.

I didn’t love Bure. I just loved to watch Bure play. He skated so fast, he scored on every breakaway, and his goal celebrations were an explosion of joy like Canadians barely understood. He was a part of my team, the team I loved when I was 12, the team who broke my heart when they lost in ‘94.

I’m happier than I expected to see him back.

"Thoreau lived in the age of Manifest Destiny, a popular doctrine that urged Americans to explore and settle their vast country, but he thought this one township was nearly big enough. To his active imagination, Concord was America on a reduced scale: The town had a sandy eastern plain, glaciated hills to the north, a river savanna down south, and western grasslands, part of them called “Texas.” Seen in the proper light, these 26 square miles were an ample slice of Destiny, an inner continent to discover and explore: “The whole world is an America, a New World.”"

William Howarth, “Thoreau: A Different Man”, National Geographic March 1981.

This is already a great paragraph about Thoreau and Concord, but there’s something even better in here for Canadians. We learn Manifest Destiny differently than Howarth describes it here. In Canada, we learn it as America’s belief in their divine right not only to explore, but to claim. Not only their country, but their continent. The thing they wanted to claim is the place where I live. You say “Manifest Destiny”; I think "54-40 or Fight".

I’ve been thinking that I should write more about the places where Canada and America intersect. Because I live twenty minutes from one of those intersections: the border between British Columbia and Washington. I grew up listening to Canadian music, but watching American movies. I speak American English, but write British English. I have an abundance of sushi and nowhere to get good fried chicken.

I read a lot about America, but always as a Canadian. I see through you, in all the ways that scare you. But I also see myself.

factsarenothing:

Canada doesn’t really love tennis, because we’ve never had a moment to truly love. Raonic is our best player ever, as difficult as it is to fall in love with him. Pospisil is rising to an uncertain place. On the women’s side 19-year-old Eugenie Bouchard of Montreal is nearing the top 50. A generation is both coming, departing — Nestor cannot be great forever — and here.

- Bruce Arthur, Davis Cup 2013: Canada’s run ‘goes beyond words’

There’s professional sports, and then there’s national sports, sports played on the world stage with your country’s flag on your chest, and I will always choose the latter. I don’t love tennis (I barely understand tennis), but this Davis Cup team had me cheering for somewhere Canada has never been, which is always exciting, always hard, and more heartbreaking than not, even if you can pull out the once-in-a-lifetime win. 

Canada didn’t. This time. But now we’ve had a tennis moment to truly love.

factsarenothing:

There was a stretch in the middle of my five season Adventure Time marathon where, despite how much I love this kid’s cartoon for being progressive, subversive, and a home for different voices in the world, it was starting to feel very boy. I mean that in the nicest way, and it’s not like I didn’t expect it, going into a show about a 13-year-old boy and his magical dog best friend. But the gross-out humour and wrestling and sword fights were starting to wear, and I was growing impatient for the next Princess Bubblegum or Marceline episode.

It was the third or fourth time they took a shot at the seduction community (yes, the seduction community) that I realised what I wasn’t seeing. A show where the most powerful leader is a pink bubblegum princess who loves science and where the most annoying villain is a sad, old man chasing after young girls, Adventure Time is teaching boys how to be men. Good men, not Nice Guys.

Finn has a crush on PB, but whenever he starts to get weird (he’s 13; she’s 18), Jake gives him a smack. Jake is a dog, but he’s also Finn’s big brother. When Finn finds a copy of Mind Games by Jay T. Doggzone (a thinly-veiled parody of every PUA manual ever), Jake has to explain that he only keeps it around for laughs. He doesn’t believe in that stuff, and neither should Finn. Jake sets the example for a healthy relationship, with his girlfriend, Lady Rainicorn, the entire span of the series. (They have kids together, too, even if rainicorns age faster than expected.)

Once Bubblegum lets Finn down, he sulks for a few episodes. Then he meets the Flame Princess. She’s 13, too, and though they don’t have a lot in common, and she doesn’t always laugh at his jokes, Finn likes her. They go on picnics (with Jake and Lady as chaperones). Finn takes her to a dungeon. Flame Princess teaches him how to blow stuff up. They’re getting to know each other.

For Finn, the most important thing is to be a hero. He spends his days fighting the Ice King, saving the Candy Kingdom, and inventing new ways to make people laugh. It’s his job. In the Land of Ooo, a 13-year-old boy can do this as a job.

In our world, 13-year-old boys are in their first year of high school. They’re noticing how girls are different. They’re figuring out what they can do as a job. They’re pulling away from their parents and looking up to the big kids in grade 12. There is still a lot of gross-out humour and wrestling and sword fights, but we change in a lot of ways during those four years of high school, and one of those ways is deciding what to pick up and what to leave behind.

I hope the boys growing up and watching Adventure Time right now don’t leave Finn and Jake behind. They’re teaching important lessons about what to do, who to be, and how to treat the world, not only the people you care about, but everyone. I hope the men getting high and watching Adventure Time right now are paying attention, too. There are lessons for them that they maybe didn’t get the first time around.

Be a hero. Save the day. But if a girl doesn’t laugh at your jokes, that’s no reason to run away and hide in the pillow fort. Be a man. And if you can’t be a man, be a boy like Finn. You’ll get there eventually.

Maura Magazine: Building a Better Love Story by Jess Driscoll →

Today, I write love stories, but my reading habits run more toward non-fiction books—about salt, or the Kennedys, or a family-run diner. I want to find the kind of love stories that speak to my experiences, so this year, I’m trying to figure out romance novels.

factsarenothing:

maura:

Oh, hello, Maura Magazine has a new issue! A gorgeous, harrowing piece of fiction by Nick Antosca inspired the incredible cover. Plus: Maura Johnston on rock snobbery; Jess Driscoll on the need for better romance novels; and Jeremy Gordon on action heroes! 

Subscribe today! 

I’m in this issue! You should go subscribe and read because my essay is way better than the first time I wrote it. Thanks to Maura for her edits and the fastest turnaround from acceptance to publication, and thanks to Megan for telling me to submit something, even when I didn’t know what to submit.

Making the Clackity Noise

factsarenothing:

merlin:

Buffering [Sonny Payne]

When I was a percussionist in high school, we were responsible for keeping the jazz band, full orchestra, concert band, and marching band in time, and we did so through a haze of marijuana and hormones and passed-down stories of some guy’s uncle who saw Gene Krupa perform a 12-minute solo using every part of a high hat while eschewing the rest of the kit. And to this day, when I see videos like this, I get an urge to skip class and go make out with a bassoonist in a sound-proof practice room. After all, life is short, and lunch period is even shorter.

Did you read that? That was swell. One hundred five words. Less than half a page.

That’s all it took for this person (whom I’m pretty sure I’ve never met) to make my day. Now I want to follow this person or star this person or favr this person or whatever the fuck au courant verb box I need to mash on in order to see more things like that.

Yes, I realize I am — already, again, seemingly forever — carrying on like that weird relative who always smells of gin and Starlight mints as he threatens to “set you up with a sweet Doobie Brothers mix.” I love Starlight mints, but please don’t misunderstand me.

I genuinely enjoy looking at oversaturated pictures of coltish women I’ll never meet. I’m always game to make fun of “improperly” punctuated “signs.” And God knows I love reading (and posting) elliptical quotes from famous books I never finished reading. Stipulated.

But, brother. Do I ever wish more people would write little stories like Buffering’s. It’s just so wonderful. You know?

I mean, Jesus Christ, people, LOOK. We have keyboards! Literally right in front of us. Right this second.

Read More

This post is nearly four years old, and I think about it nearly every day. Every day when I make the clackity noise and especially the days when I don’t.

Your keyboard will have different things in it than mine does, of course. But, it’s impossible to know what’s in there until you’ve made the clackity noise for a few minutes. You think you know what’s in there. But you don’t. It’s not your brain that makes the clackity noise, it’s your fingers.

Little stories come easy for me. I’ve written little stories my whole life. But the bigger they get, the harder they are to write. The secret is to break the big stories into little stories. 250 words in ten minutes, scene by scene, and if you work at that long enough, you’ll find you have a novel.

I used to feel like I would never write a novel, like I couldn’t. I’ve long thought that I’m more a poet than a prose writer. The first time I read a Harold Pinter prose poem, my brain went, yes, yes, yes. It was about cricket, and I don’t know anything about cricket, so I wrote one about hockey, dissecting Pinter’s structure and style.

This was before I started writing on the internet, and when I did, I recognised it as poetry immediately. I use whitespace and line breaks the way poets use whitespace and line breaks. It’s my punchline, my rhyming couplet.

I had been going about this novel thing all wrong. I was trying to write a novel like the ones we read in school. But what I was writing online wasn’t anything like that. The only way I’m ever going to write my novel is to write it my way: making the clackity noise, telling little stories, clicking them together into bigger stories, and knowing where to put the line breaks.

It’s been a quieter month than I had hoped for. I always know I’m not writing when I’m making too much of the wrong kind of noise, the whining instead of the clacking. I needed to read this again today, if only to remind myself that writing doesn’t happen in your head.

It happens in your fingers.